David Steinhardt -- saved Richardson Bay from being filled

David Steinhardt was proud of his abilities in the operating room, but the prominent surgeon will go down in history as the environmentalist who almost single-handedly stopped developers from filling in and carving up Richardson Bay.

A memorial service will be held next month for Dr. Steinhardt, who died on June 29 of complications from a heart attack and cancer at his home in Tiburon. He was 84.

Family lore has it that he met his future wife, Janith, in 1941, when, as a medical student and Eagle Scout, he gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation during a first aid demonstration to her Girl Scout troop. They married in 1944.

During World War II, he ministered to German prisoners of war while serving as a captain in the Army Medical Corps, on the Brazil, a transport ship.

Dr. Steinhardt was the first chief of surgery at Kaiser Hospital in Santa Clara, holding the position from 1964 through 1974. As a general and pediatric surgeon, he taught on the clinical faculty of Stanford University Medical School in the 1970s. He also worked at Kaiser in Oakland and San Francisco, briefly served at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Redwood City and conducted hospital credentialing inspections throughout California.

His specialty was performing intricate surgeries on infants at a time when lasers, laparoscopes and complex imaging devices did not exist. He won numerous medical awards for, among other things, his work in leukemia research and for his innovative surgical methods.

But it was his role in saving Richardson Bay, in Marin County, that created the biggest fuss.

An avid environmentalist and outdoorsman, he was horrified by plans in the 1950s to fill in Richardson Bay from the tip of Strawberry Point across to Tiburon. The plan, which would have paved the way for thousands of homes and apartments, was to turn what is now a pristine bay teeming with wildlife into another planned community, like Foster City.

The effort to stop the development started literally as dredging equipment was being moved into place. In those days a person could purchase tide lots, underwater plots that were presumably for marinas or other marine- type businesses.

Dr. Steinhardt, who lived on Strawberry Point at the time, bought one of the tide lots in Richardson Bay, temporarily stopping the dredging. Then he and his wife mobilized neighbors and other concerned citizens of Marin County and arranged for acquisition of 900 acres of underwater tidelands through a newly formed organization called the Richardson Bay Foundation.

His efforts paid off big when the National Audubon Society got involved, winning Richardson Bay permanent designation as a wildlife sanctuary.

According to his family, Dr. Steinhardt liked to tell the story about how he used sleight of hand to get some of the property. It happened, he often said with a chuckle, when his hand was bumped and his pen slipped while he was drawing the boundaries of the proposed sanctuary for officials. The slip caused him to circle a large area that wasn't part of the plan, but when the owners saw the drawing, they decided to donate the land.

During the battle to save Richardson Bay, Dr. Steinhardt noticed an old, dilapidated Victorian house on Strawberry Point that was about to be razed. The house, then known as the Dickey House, had been built in 1876 on a dairy ranch owned by Dr. Benjamin Lyford and his wife, Hilarita. She was the daughter of John Reed, the first white settler in Marin County and a seminal figure in the history of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Reed had owned a Mexican land grant that spanned 9,000 acres of what had been virtual wilderness from Tiburon to San Rafael.

Dr. Steinhardt rescued the house from destruction by barging it across Richardson Bay to Tiburon, where he had secured property by pledging lifelong care to the owner, a recluse named Rosie Verrall, who was known locally as "the goat lady."

Verrall, coincidentally, had received the land from the nephew of Hilarita Lyford, John Paul Reed. She had apparently had an early romance with Reed, who left her with a broken heart.

"Her diary would make you cry," Dr. Steinhardt recounted to The Chronicle several years ago. "She looked out every day for years to see him, but it just wasn't to be."

Dr. Steinhardt, who wrote the history of the Lyford House in his book "Richardson Bay Journal," was involved in recent renovations and remained active in the Audubon Center. In 2003, a bench was dedicated there in his honor.

"He led the effort to save the Bay from a plan that would have destroyed it with landfill and built thousands of homes and apartments," said Michele Pearson, executive director of the Tiburon Audubon Center. "Those of us in this community owe a lot to his creative efforts and faithfulness to this cause."

Dr. Steinhardt was an avid sailor, amateur photographer and top notch craftsman, who also drew cartoons and wrote illustrated stories and poems for his family.

His son, Kim, of Aptos, Santa Cruz County, said his father was good with a quip, had a self-deprecating wit and lived by the phrase "thinking outside the box," which he began using long before it became a cliche.

"He was a highly successful and driven surgeon," said Kim, "so I never understood how he was able to marshal the kind of energy it took to take on everything he did outside his work."

Besides his son, Kim, and wife Janith of Tiburon, he is survived by daughter Barbara Steinhardt-Carter of Sacramento; son Jeffrey of Henley-on- Thames, England; and four grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Aug. 20 at The Lyford House, 376 Greenwood Beach Rd., Tiburon.